The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.

Hannah Arendt
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. - Unknown

  2. In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want;... - Karl Marx

  3. The first duty of a man is to think for himself - Unknown

  4. You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker - Malcolm X

  5. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners. - Vladimir Lenin

More Quotes By Hannah Arendt
  1. I'm more than ever of the opinion that a decent human existence is possible today only on the fringes of society, where one then runs the risk of starving or being stoned to death. In these circumstances, a sense of humor is a great help.

  2. When an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head.

  3. The common prejudice that love is as common as "romance" may be due to the fact that we all learned about it first through poetry. But the poets fool us; they are the only ones to whom love is not only a crucial, but an...

  4. The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.

  5. The world and the people who inhabit it are not the same. The world lies between people, and this in-between — much more than (as is often thought) men or even man — is today the object of the greatest concern and the most obvious...

Related Topics